Songhua
Songhua is a mapped river in the YearMaps hydrographic index, part of the Sungari system. River courses organise settlement, agriculture and frontier-making more durably than any political boundary, and this reach is indexed against the dams, lakes and cities within its catchment.
- Feature Class
- River
- System
- Sungari
- Coordinates
- 45.97°, 128.76°
About Songhua
The Songhua or Sunghwa River (also Haixi or Xingal, Russian: Сунгари, romanized: Sungari) is one of the primary rivers of China, and the longest tributary of the Amur. It flows about 1,897 km (1,179 mi) from Changbai Mountains on the China–North Korea border through China's northeastern Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces.
The river drains 557,180 km2 (215,130 mi2) of land, and has an annual discharge of 76.2 km3/a (2,410 m3/s) to 81.77 km3/a (2,591 m3/s).
The extreme flatness of the Northeast China Plain has caused the river to meander over time, filling the wide plain with oxbow lakes, as remnants of the previous paths of the river.
Encyclopedic summary adapted from Wikipedia: Songhua River (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Songhua in Depth
Geography
The Songhua rises south of Heaven Lake, near the China-North Korea border.
From there it flows north, to be interrupted by the Baishan, Hongshi and Fengman hydroelectric dams. The Fengman Dam forms a lake that stretches for 62 kilometers (39 mi). Below the dam, the Second Songhua flows north through Jilin, then northwest until it is joined by its largest tributary, the Nen River, near Da'an, to create the Songhua proper.
The Songhua turns east through Harbin, and after the city, it is joined from the south by the Ashi River, and then by the Hulan River from the north.
History
In November 2005, the river was contaminated with benzene, leading to a shutdown of Harbin's water supply. The spill stretched 80 kilometers (50 mi) and eventually reached the Amur (Heilong) River on the China–Russia border. On July 28, 2010, several thousand barrels from two chemical plants in China's Jilin City were washed away by floods. Some of them contained 170 kilograms (370 lb) of explosive material like trimethylsilyl chloride and hexamethyldisiloxane. In 2016, the part near the city of Jilin was affected by a minor flood.
Sections adapted from Wikipedia: Songhua River (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Major River Dossiers
Hand-written studies of the great river systems of history.
Connected Reaches
Nearby watercourses in the same drainage network.
Water Bodies in the Catchment
Settlements Along the Reach
Hydraulic Infrastructure Nearby
Surrounding Terrain
Songhua: Quick Answers
- Where is Songhua?
- Songhua is located in China, at 45.9666° N, 128.7583° E.
- Are there dams on the Songhua?
- No dam on the Songhua is recorded in the YearMaps dam index, which covers major structures only.
- Which river system is the Songhua part of?
- The Songhua is part of the Sungari system.